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European Parliament committee hearings are normally quite mundane. But then again, they aren’t usually centered around Laura Codruta Kovesi.

Kovesi is Romania’s star anti-corruption prosecutor. And when she took the floor in Brussels in to make her pitch to MEPs for the EU’s new top prosecutor job, she had journalists scrambling for spots and some European lawmakers applauding her sharp rebuttals.

“I am aware that you have been exposed to a lot of negative information about me. I have absolutely nothing to hide,” Kovesi told MEPs last Tuesday (26 February), whose bid for the politically sensitive European Public Prosecutor’s Office has been under siege by Romania’s Social Democrat-led government, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

The 45-year-old former professional basketball player rose to fame in Romania as the unrelenting prosecutor who has run the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) since 2013. Under her leadership, the DNA has launched thousands of investigations, exposing high-level corruption and helping bring about the sentencing of – as she told MEPs – over sixty high-ranking officials, such as ministers and lawmakers.

“You have given us a sense of confidence in the Romanian system,” Ingeborg Grassle, a powerful German MEP leading the budget control committee in the parliament told Kovesi during the hearing.

Cleaning up Corruption in Bucharest

Romania ranked 25th among the EU’s 28 countries on the 2018 Perceived Corruption list compiled by Transparency international, ahead of only of Bulgaria, Greece, and Hungary. However, Kovesi’s efforts have given Romanians new trust in their anti-corruption institutions. According to a 2015 poll, Romanians trust the DNA as much as the Orthodox church, a startling success in one of the most religious countries in the EU, where mistrust in the state is deep-seated.

Kovesi, who also served as the youngest general prosecutor of Romania – a country where judicial reform and anti-graft fight have been under scrutiny by the EU since it has joined the bloc in 2007 – has caught the attention of transparency advocates and the European Commission, which said in its 2016 report on Romania’s judiciary that “the track record of the key judicial and integrity institutions in addressing high-level corruption has remained impressive.”

To her supporters, Kovesi is a heroine standing up to a corrupt political elite; to her critics she is a zealot who has used her powers excessively with a broad interpretation of “abuse of power”. Indeed, Kovesi has not shied away from stepping on the toes of the powerful. Last June, Liviu Dragnea, chair of the ruling Social democratic party (PSD) and de facto leader of the country, received a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for abuse of office (pending appeal). In 2016, Dragnea had already received a two-year suspended sentence for election fraud, preventing him from serving as prime minister.

The PSD-led government first came for Kovesi last February: the justice minister called for her dismissal, accusing prosecutors under her command of falsifying evidence and saying Kovesi had harmed Romania’s international reputation. While Romanian President Klaus Iohannis initially refused to sack her—he is also a political opponent of Dragnea—a Constitutional Court ruling supporting the government’s position meant that Iohannis was unable to stop her dismissal. A month after Kovesi’s departure, an estimated hundred thousand Romanians took to the streets to protest against the government’s legislative changes weakening the rule of law.

Then when Kovesi decided to seek office on a European level, the Romanian government launched a campaign to stop her. Kovesi announced in December that she would run for the office of the European Public Prosecutor, a new body created with the support of 22 member states to investigate and prosecute fraudulent use of EU taxpayer money. But she faces concocted charges of malfeasance, bribery, and perjury from a new agency set up by Bucharest. She denies the allegations.

“I was independent. My results are speaking for me. We investigated members of different parties. We investigated people that have important positions, wealth. The independence was provided by law. Now, there are attempts to limit our independence,” Kovesi told MEPs last week.

The race for the EU job

The Bucharest government’s efforts to undermine Kovesi’s candidacy put a spotlight on the race. Kovesi was picked by an expert panel to be the best for the job. However, a secret-ballot vote among EU ambassadors ranked a French candidate, Jean-Francois Bohnert as favorite. Kovesi came in second, together with Germany’s aspirant.

Does she have enough support to get the job? While Romania’s campaign against its anti-corruption champion ruffled feathers in western European capitals, it is a problem for any candidate when his or her country is not supporting the bid, an EU diplomat said.

With the two relevant European parliamentary committees firmly supporting Kovesi, the parliament will start negotiations with the representatives of member states, led by the Finnish EU ambassador and including the Portuguese and Croatian ambassadors (whose countries will give the next EU presidencies), to decide on who will get the job in the end.

Bohnert, the French candidate who addressed MEPs in several languages, is a strong candidate and a safe bet with his experience in helping to set up Eurojust, the EU’s judicial cooperation agency.  He told lawmakers that fighting corruption could make the chief prosecutor’s office a new tool to boost democratic trust in the EU, but added that as a prosecutor he would not “name and shame” member states when asked by an MEP what he would do in countries where EU money fraud is systematic.

But Kovesi’s possible rise to power – she would be a rare eastern European woman in top EU position still dominated by western European men – isn’t just unnerving politicians in Bucharest. She has also become a symbol for anti-corruption campaigners in Bulgaria and Hungarian opposition politicians railing against graft in prime minister Viktor Orban’s government.

Maltese center-right MEP and anti-corruption campaigner Roberta Metsola welcomed Kovesi at the parliament hearing by saying that “in spite of every imaginable obstacle being put in your way, your dignified courage in the continued onslaught has inspired people across the continent”.

More Oversight from Brussels

Kovesi’s candidacy also sheds a light on the EU’s efforts to keep a closer eye on how eastern and central European countries spend EU funds. Last year, the commission tabled proposals to link EU funding to the health of the rule of law in member states in an attempt to sanction those governments that threaten the independence of the judiciary.

The commission’s proposal is already interpreted in Warsaw and Budapest as a political attack on eastern member states. Kovesi’s appointment could send a strong signal from the EU to countries on the eastern flank and member states with systemic corruption issues–but selecting such a politicized figure could also prompt a backlash there.

Hungary and Poland are already among the six EU countries that have opted out of the prosecutor’s office, fearing further oversight by EU institutions in the affairs of national governments. Budapest and Warsaw’s interference in the independence of their judiciaries has already triggered an EU sanctions procedure for both countries.

While the member states hope to agree on the top prosecutor by the end of March, negotiations could drag on for months if the parliament and EU countries dig in their positions. “This is all very dramatic,” MEP Claude Moraes, chairman of the civil liberties committee, quipped during the parliament vote on the nominees.

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© Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea via REUTERS

The Visegrád Group has been a topic of discussion in Romania on only two occasions. The first was after it was created, on 15 February 1991. At the time, analysts in Bucharest believed that, because it was not invited to join the group, Romania would end up as a grey area, a buffer between the West and the Soviet Union. It is no wonder that then-President Ion Iliescu used this as leverage to sign a Treaty of Friendship with the USSR, which took place in Moscow on April 4, 1991; no one at the time could imagine that Romania could stand shoulder to shoulder with the V4 states, which had initiated reforms as early as the 1980s.

The second time the topic of the V4 came up was when President Klaus Iohannis rejected the idea of Romania moving closer to the Visegrád Group this year. In a statement issued on October 12, the president said: “In the last year, the Visegrád Group has certain opinions that are very different from our own, and at this time, in my opinion, a rapprochement between Romania and the Visegrád Group is not realistic.” Iohannis made this statement after a visit to the Ford factory in Craiova.

This came after an interview with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban featured in Romania’s Hungarian language press, in which Orban extended an invitation for cooperation with the V4, but not an offer to join: “The question is what the Romanians want. This is something for them to decide. By launching joint economic projects and setting joint goals in cooperation with the Hungarians, they could also be part of a great Central European success story. The bulk of the entire European Union’s economic growth comes from the Visegrád Four. In a ‘V4 + Romania’ formation, we could find a form of cooperation which would eventually lead to improved living standards, greater security, and better prospects for Romanians in Romania as well. We’re keeping this door open.”

What this illustrates is that, in talking about the future of Romanian relations with the V4, we are dealing with a misunderstanding: Romania does not want to join the V4, and the V4 never invited it to do so. So what is behind the furious debate surrounding this issue over the last few weeks?

The Visegrád Group, or a Orban Viktor Fan Club?

First of all, it should be stressed that the debate today in Romania is not so much about the V4, but more about Orban’s Hungary and its illiberal, euroskeptic model, which is controversial in Romania for several reasons.

For one, there are politicians in Romania who would eagerly emulate Orban’s control over his country’s judiciary. Senate Speaker Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu and the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Liviu Dragnea, are open fans of Orban, but for very personal reasons. Both are under judicial investigation, and both may receive court sentences. It is essential for them to gain control of the justice system and alter legislation to save themselves and their close associates from lengthy prison sentences. The greater part of the magistrate corps in Romania, most of the country’s civil society, a small part of the press (the part not controlled by owners who themselves are in legal trouble), and the European Commission have all opposed any such changes to legislation, and supported the independence of the country’s judicial system. A coalition of this size is hard to defeat, but not impossible, as Orban proved.

In fact, for Romanian politicians who feel stifled by Brussels, Orban is a legend, an outlaw who fights against European bureaucracy. This bureaucracy has disciplined the political class in Bucharest through the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, meaning that Orban, Dragnea, and Popescu-Tăriceanu have a common enemy – Brussels – but for different reasons.

Romania and the V4 Model

The second problem is what the V4 states have in common. They have an anti-immigration attitude, they accuse the EU of double standards in terms of food safety, they criticize the core states of the EU, and they believe they are persecuted and omitted from the decision-making process in Brussels.

Even if economic nationalism, populism, anti-Soros rhetoric, and anti-Western rhetoric have gained ground over the last year, the Orban model does not hold much appeal in Romania, no matter how much it is promoted by certain politicians. Both Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski are expressions of confidence in national authorities over international authorities. For Romanians, it is the other way around: Romanians value Brussels and Washington, and look down on the national political elite. This is a common mindset in Bucharest, where people believe that NATO and EU integration was achieved in spite of the establishment, not thanks to it. The most obvious expression of this lack of confidence in the future of the country is the fact that every year a large number of Romanian citizens continue to emigrate: around 4 million out of 22 million citizens have left Romania in the last quarter century.

The V4 model also has an important ideological component that Romanians reject. In his messages to Romania, Orban has emphasized the threat posed by migrants, the need to defend the eastern frontier, and Romania’s Christian future, expressing the hope that he would be able to collaborate with Bucharest on this basis. Simply reading these messages proves both the inadequacy of Orban’s approach and his lack of knowledge of the country to which they are addressed, a country that is not receptive to such ideological messages.

Romania has never had a close relationship with its neighbors, and has a tense history with some of them, Hungary first and foremost. Traditionally, it has relied on its Western allies, chiefly France and the UK. The institutions instrumental in its foreign and security policy are all Western-oriented – the foreign ministry, the defense ministry, and the intelligence services. In their view, the Russian threat is the greatest danger for Romania. Orban is seen by these power structures as a sort of lieutenant for Putin, with Romania apparently caught in a Russian-Hungarian vice. The influence of these institutions should not be underestimated, especially after the annexation of Crimea, as they have taken decisive control of Romania regional and security policy.

Bucharest has no plan for Romania to join the Visegrád Group; the conditions have not been met for such a plan to make sense. In Romanian public opinion, Hungary is Russia’s Trojan horse in NATO and the EU, and Romanians would have great reservations regarding any attempt to bring Bucharest and Budapest closer together.

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© REUTERS/Inquam Photos/Liviu Florin Albei

Romanians are upset, to put it mildly. Over the last two weeks, hundreds of thousands of them have gathered in dozens of cities across the country to protest against government attempts to weaken anti-corruption laws. The demonstrators have chanted, danced, debated, waved signs, and sung the national anthem. And for more than 13 days in a row, they have occupied – and still continue to occupy – Victory Square in central Bucharest, opposite the seat of government.

They were spurred to action after the Social Democratic (PSD)-led government passed a controversial emergency decree to decriminalize official misconduct, where the financial damage was less than 200,000 Romanian Lei (approximately €44,000). The aim was clear: the law would legalize petty bribery.

It was a short-lived decree. The PSD couldn’t ignore the escalating number of protesters – who reached an estimated 200,000 in Bucharest on February 5 – and the international attention. The government bowed to the pressure, issuing a new decree that essentially revoked the original one. The official architect of the initial law, Minister of Justice Florin Iordache, then resigned.

But the public, riding the swell of discontent, wants more. Despite temperatures that dropped to minus seven degrees Celsius last Sunday, tens of thousands gathered once more in front of the government to chant “Thieves!” and “Resign!” In a stunning display of glittering lights beamed around the world, the protesters formed a giant Romanian flag by raising pieces of colored paper in blue, yellow, and red. They want nothing less than the entire government to stand down.

Romanians want to ensure what happened on January 31 can’t happen again. They don’t trust a government that passes laws in the dark of the night with no public debate, especially not when that legislation benefits many members of their own political party who have either been indicted or are on trial for corruption. The current government was elected in December 2016, and the governing party – the PSD – has historically been associated with corrupt practices.

The demonstrations are the largest since the fall of communism in 1989, but the wave of public dissent actually began back in 2012. Protest movements were first triggered by a health reform; public frustration then spilled over into demonstrations against the political elite. In 2013, protests erupted again when the government gave the green light to a gold mine in the Apuseni Mountains of Transylvania, where ancient Roman galleries still remain. These protests, which attracted over 30,000 on one night alone, helped shaped a newfound sense of cultural identity and empowered a civic consciousness. They were also effective: work never began on the mine.

Then there was the tragic nightclub fire in Colectiv in Bucharest that saw 64 people die after an indoor fireworks display ignited the ceiling and walls. Tens of thousands demonstrated, blaming graft for poor safety regulations. This public display of anger forced the then government led by Prime Minister Victor Ponta to resign, ushering in the technocratic leadership. Ponta was already on trial for fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion at that point. The surge of demonstrations cemented the belief among Romanians that their protests could indeed effect change.

Rooting out Corruption

Corruption is not a new phenomenon in Romania – it has always been a serious issue, but the fight against graft has intensified since the country joined the European Union in 2007. Institutions like the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) started to score major successes by putting several former ministers and top officials behind bars. Adrian Nastase, former prime minister of Romania, along with ministers and members of parliament, were put on trial.

The DNA, led by 43 year-old prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi, was launched back in 2002, but it only began to carry out investigations into high level corruption in earnest in 2006. These days, the agency enjoys high confidence among Romanians. Several surveys conducted in recent years put the DNA among the most trusted institutions in Romania, higher even than the Orthodox Church. The PSD has the largest number of indicted members; it’s not a surprise that the party claims the DNA’s investigations are politically motivated.

Despite the DNA’s recent progress, corruption is rooted deep in Romanian mentality. It starts in infant years and ends on the hospital bed; Romanians have to bribe everyone from teachers in school to employees in public institutions and doctors in order to survive. So when the New York Times asked Romanians to share their own experiences of corruption, the answers were quite predictable.

Graft is so chronic that the idea of mayors winning elections from behind bars has become commonplace. In Baia Mare, a city in northwestern Romania, 38-year-old Catalin Chereches won the local elections in 2016 with some 70 percent of the vote to secure his second mandate – even though he was arrested for taking a bribe in his first term.

On the streets of Baia Mare, most residents admitted that they were willing to overlook his legal issues. “Chereches did a lot for our town,” they said. “He repaired streets, built parks and playgrounds for children. So what if he stole a little?”

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(c) Mikhail Palinchak/Handout via REUTERS

For once there is some good news from the politically challenged periphery of the European Union. Chalk it up to nascent democracy, womanpower, and, believe it or not, the enduring attraction of joining the EU family.

In Ukraine, as the initial shock of Russia’s attack last year faded in memory, oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky tried to return to business as usual and grab new state assets. After his private protection squad recently took over the head office of the huge Ukrnafta oil and gas concern in Kiev, however, he was sacked by the central government from his post as the governor of Dnipropetrovsk province. In Romania – a nation renowned for graft – the highest serving official to be investigated for corruption in the past quarter century, Finance Minister Darius Valcov, actually resigned. And in Serbia, for the first time since ethnic Serbs massacred some 8000 unarmed Bosnian Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica in 1995, police arrested suspected Serb perpetrators of Europe’s worst atrocity in half a century for trial in Serbian courts.

Dangers still abound, of course. Russian President Vladimir Putin continues his nuclear saber-rattling. There are widespread fears that he may end the current fragile truce in eastern Ukraine when the spring mud hardens and overpower the outgunned Ukrainian army and militia defenders to seize more territory, and the crackdown on Kolomoisky has not stopped the greater menace that Vienna-based oligarch Dmytro Firtash poses to the Kiev government, as he wields influence by funding parties and politicians in Ukraine and throughout German-speaking Europe. In Romania, the political system there remains largely populated by unreformed members of the old pre-1989 Communist Party, who have formed a kaleidoscope of cozy clientelist parties. And in Serbia, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic still says that Serbia will never recognize the 2008 independence of Serbia’s one-time province of Kosovo, while the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights reports that respect for human rights deteriorated in Serbia in 2014.

Nonetheless, taming Ukraine’s oligarchs, putting previously immune Romanian officials on trial, and finally bringing Serb suspects in the genocide at Srebrenica to justice in Serbia’s own courts all mark turning points.

In Ukraine, the trigger to Kolomoisky’s fall from grace was neither the opening move of a coup, as widely reported, nor a repetition of the internecine feuding of the political winners of the earlier Orange Revolution. It was instead a backsliding to the oligarchs’ snatch-what-you-can reflex on the part of a billionaire who is skillful at murky deals but also feels some sense of civic responsibility. He tried to prolong his previous low-cost control of Ukrnafta, which he had maintained as a minority shareholder by blocking corporate meetings under an old sweetheart law requiring a quorum of 60 percent of shareholders. When Ukraine’s reformist Rada changed the law to a 50-percent-plus quorum, Kolomoisky sent his protection squad into Ukrnafta headquarters, allegedly to prevent a Russian raid. His quick dismissal from the Dnipropetrovsk governorship warned other oligarchs that undue political influence really is being curtailed – and that they would do well to emulate America’s 19th-century barons, support the rule of law to protect their new wealth, pay their taxes, and become philanthropists.

Everyone agrees that the oligarchs must be coopted into the new Ukrainian system if it is going to succeed, and Kolomoisky had himself already started to evolve in this direction. He contributed handsomely to construction of the world’s largest Jewish community center, which opened in Dnipropetrovsk in 2012 and quickly became a cultural magnet for the entire city.  After Russia attacked Ukraine a year ago, he returned from his homes in Switzerland and Israel to become governor of the key province of Dnipropetrovsk in central Ukraine, where he personally paid and equipped volunteer militias that helped hold the line against pro-Russian incursions from eastern Ukraine last summer. His downfall came when he wanted to keep his favored position in both his civic and tycoon worlds – and his disciplining will continue as all volunteer militias are gradually brought under army command.

Moreover, a number of the civil society watchdogs who ignited last year’s “Revolution of Dignity” – learning by doing as they camped out in Kiev’s “Euromaidan” square for three months and organized seminars on good governance and writing legislation – now hold seats in parliament alongside oligarchs. They are continuing their crusade inside elected institutions.

In Romania, even as a post-Soviet kleptocracy took root in the quarter century since the end of the Cold War, it was women who bucked the hierarchy and kept a fledgling anti-graft movement alive. Human-rights activist Monica Macovei was appointed justice minister in the three years before Romania was admitted to EU membership in 2007, survived death threats, and managed to improve the country’s human-rights protection sufficiently to meet the minimum EU legal standard. Laura Codruta Kovesi, Chief Prosecutor of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate since 2013, won 90 percent of her indictments last year, convicting a former prime minister, five parliamentarians, 24 mayors, and 1,108 others. Romania’s women lawyers are now fully backed by Klaus Iohannis, a straight shooter from Romania’s tiny ethnic German minority who was elected president in a surprise upset last November. In order to allow the government to work without suspicion, Iohannis persuaded Finance Minister Valcov to resign last week while he is investigated on charges of accepting a two million-euro kickback for the award of a public works contract. This is a common precaution when senior officials come under investigation in northern EU member states, but not in Romania. Other senior politicians are already becoming more circumspect, especially since surveys show that the 55 percent of the electorate who supported Iohannis last November has now swelled to some 75 percent who approve of his fight against graft.

In Serbia it is the female human-rights activists, male prosecutors, and Brussels eurocrats who have worked together for transformation. Sonja Biserko founded the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Belgrade and railed against Great Serb hubris. Natasa Kandic founded the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade and in 2005 broadcast a secret selfie video made by the Serb paramilitary Scorpions as they murdered six unarmed Bosniak boys and men from Srebrenica in 1995. The women braved death threats from compatriots who deemed them traitors to Serbdom. So did the unpopular male prosecutors who pursued Serb war crimes perpetrators.

Political pragmatism finally took hold as Aleksandar Vucic – who started his career as a wunderkind acolyte of strongman Slobodan Milosevic –quit Serbia’s most chauvinist party, won a decisive election, and, as prime minister reached an EU-brokered partial accommodation with Kosovo in 2013. This was the price demanded by Brussels for starting negotiations with Belgrade on Serbia’s coveted accession to the European Union. Today, twenty years after the Srebrenica massacre, Serb prosecutors are finally able to arrest Srebrenica suspects for trial in Serbian courts without igniting riots.

These are all harbingers of a healthy evolution in the region.

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